Abstract
Recent work in folk metaethics finds a correlation between perceived consensus about a moral claim and meta-ethical judgments about whether the claim is universally or only relatively true. We argue that consensus can provide evidence for meta-normative claims, such as whether a claim is universally true. We then report several experiments indicating that people use consensus to make inferences about whether a claim is universally true. This suggests that people's beliefs about relativism and universalism are partly guided by evidence-based reasoning. In a final study, we show that the rejection of universalism does not generate a simple subjectivism but is associated with a more moderate relativism on which highly atypical positions are regarded as mistaken.
Original language | English (US) |
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Pages (from-to) | 67-89 |
Number of pages | 23 |
Journal | Mind and Language |
Volume | 35 |
Issue number | 1 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - Feb 1 2020 |
Keywords
- consensus
- metaethics
- moral learning
- moral psychology
- relativism
- universalism
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Language and Linguistics
- Philosophy
- Linguistics and Language